Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Yay!! After many years of missing this day due to work, I finally get to be home for Winter Solstice Festival / Kor Tung in Cantonese :)) No one seems to be able to tell me why, but it seems today is more important than Chinese New Year *puzzled*
Anyway, what I like most about Winter Solstice is we get to eat delicious, coloured glutinuous balls - Thong Yuen.
For the sweet version, they usually come in green, red and white; cooked in ginger sugar syrup.
For the salty version, we have lots of mushroom, chicken, prawn, cabbage and dried prawn cooked in big pot of soup.. yummm!!
The first thing in the morning, I had one sweet Thong Yuen to signify all rounder good luck (hence the round shape of the Thong Yuen), sweet syrup to signify all things sweet and nice. Oh, and it means I am a year older too (eeeks).
So heres to wishing all of you a better year ahead! :D
Pic from FaeGarden.
A little info about Winter Solstice (fr About.com)
The winter solstice – is called Dōng Zhì (冬至) in Mandarin Chinese and has special meaning in the traditional Chinese calendar.
Dōng Zhì is the day when families get together and eat tāng yuán (湯圓), a sweet soup made of glutinous rice balls. It is also the day when everyone becomes one year older.
The Chinese characters for Dōng Zhì are 冬至. The first character means “winter” and the second character means “arrival.”
In traditional Chinese society, the arrival of winter meant that the farmers would lay down their tools and celebrate the harvest by coming home to their families. A feast would be prepared to mark the occasion.
These days, Dōng Zhì is still an important cultural holiday. Even though most people do not get a day off work, everyone tries to get together with their families to eat tāng yuán.
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